{"id":13500,"date":"2020-11-20T05:23:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-20T11:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/?p=13500"},"modified":"2020-11-20T05:23:00","modified_gmt":"2020-11-20T11:23:00","slug":"scraggly-pessimism-or-bright-eyed-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/?p=13500","title":{"rendered":"Scraggly Pessimism or Bright Eyed Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I read that this year\u2019s 75-foot-tall, 11-ton Rockefeller Center Christmas tree arrived at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. The tree, donated by Al Dick (from his front yard in Oneonta, New York), will be lit on Friday, Dec. 2. The headline that stood out first about the tree was \u201cit is a symbol of hope.\u201d Don\u2019t we all agree that the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Square or the ones that will bring joy and cheer to our homes will add HOPE to us this Christmas? After all, Christ-mas and the babe in the manger, Jesus Christ, are all about HOPE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, then, comes the naysayers and critics, and you hear things about the tree like: \u201cIt\u2019s scraggly\u201d, \u201cCould it look any worse?\u201d \u201cIt looks like it tried to cut its own hair.\u201d But then I read this headline on Tuesday: \u201cAdorable owl found tucked inside Rockefeller Christmas tree\u201d. Workers discovered the bird clinging for its life on the 75-foot-tall Norway spruce over the weekend. The bird was discovered as crews were \u201cunwrapping\u201d the tree. The bird had gone about three days without food or water before Ravensbeard Wildlife Center received the owl. A Ravensbeard rep said: \u201cWe\u2019ve given him fluids and are feeding him all the mice he will eat. So far so good. His eyes are bright. Once he gets a clean bill of health, he\u2019ll be released to continue on his wild and wonderful journey.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think about the naysayers who doubted, ridiculed, and laughed at Jesus \u2013 Jesus Who was HOPE \u2013 personified. Doesn\u2019t seem much has changed in these times. There will always be the naysayers and there will always be messengers of hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My husband described HOPE as “Something good is about to happen to you!\u201d We never gave up hope\u2026.even until his last breath, we stood by \u201cNothing is impossible with God so we will continue to HOPE that something good is about to happen.” How beautiful to live with expectancy instead of living in hopelessness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never liked it when I heard someone say, “Don’t get your hope up!” Maybe you\u2019ve heard it said or have said it during this election fiasco. No matter who said it \u2013 it is a sad and negative command! But, bring on the “Get your hope up thinkers”!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I LOVE happy ending movies! A real life, true story movie played out as our Lord lived on this earth and gave hope that something good was about to happen to those He encountered. He always gave hope, yet this same Lord, as despicable as it was, was beaten, tormented and martyred. What a sad ending to all that He taught! OH, but we don\u2019t stop there, because HOPE didn\u2019t stop there. Such good news came on the 3rd day. It wasn\u2019t the ending at all. Our Champion, Jesus Christ won on Resurrection Sunday aka Easter\u2026so, we win and HOPE with great expectancy! Anything is possible with hope!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hope gives us confidence and assurance. Hope gives us the ability to trust, to have faith in the present moment, no matter how bleak it may be. Hope gives us peace in the midst of the storm. Hope brings us joy in times of sadness. As long as we have hope, we won’t give up, because once we choose “HOPE”, anything is possible!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read that this year\u2019s 75-foot-tall, 11-ton Rockefeller Center Christmas tree arrived at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. The tree, donated by Al Dick (from his front yard in Oneonta, New York), will be lit on Friday, Dec. 2. The headline that stood out first about the tree was \u201cit is a symbol of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13568,19193,19192],"tags":[6875,1210,1769,251,19187,11081,39,40,749,19186,1420,19190,19189,19182,19191,19185,19183,19188],"class_list":["post-13500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hope","category-owl","category-rockefeller-christmas-tree","tag-anything-is-possible","tag-blog","tag-christian","tag-christmas","tag-critics","tag-get-your-hope-up","tag-hope","tag-inspiration","tag-jesus","tag-naysayers","tag-new-york","tag-norway-spruce","tag-owl","tag-pessimism","tag-ravensbeard-wildlife-center","tag-rockefeller-center-christmas-tree","tag-rockefeller-plaza","tag-scraggly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13503,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13500\/revisions\/13503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}